>"This was just an idle conversation we were having at work. Imagine that one day you wake up and you've been sent back in time, where you are now a researcher

>"This was just an idle conversation we were having at work. Imagine that one day you wake up and you've been sent back in time, where you are now a researcher at DARPA in the early 1960s. You've got the influence to effect fundamental changes in the next sixty years of the Internet's history, and can make your changes any time in the next sixty years - but you know that as soon as you change one thing in history, you'll be sent back to 2021, to continue living in the world you have wrought. How are you going to make the Internet better?" You leave it the hell alone! <g> You leave it the hell alone -- because if you don't, upon returning to 2021, you'll discover that in addition to your wanted change -- there will be all kinds of unwanted "butterfly effects" in the world, resulting from that change, and not limited to the Internet, either! <g> Like, propagating in and through actual reality -- not just constrained to a computer screen or virtual world! Unwanted/unforseen/unexpected (but mostly unwanted!) "butterfly effects" (imagine just how scary these could be if you were unprepared for them -- the scariest Stephen King novel wouldn't do them justice!) resulting from Chaos Theory (which programmers know to be actual fact -- make a small change early on in a program -- get vastly differing results later on, as the program moves through TIME...) So if it one day happens that you magically appear (through time travel, or other plot element) at DARPA in the 1960's -- then you take a quick look, like Clark Griswold in "National Lampoon's Vacation", when he takes a brief look at the Grand Canyon (all of a few seconds!), and you appreciate all that DARPA and all of the other earlier Internet researchers did -- and you leave all of it the hell alone! <g> Yup, sorry, nothing to see here, nothing to change here, no changes for me! Just passing by, not going to touch a single thing! <g> You also appreciate the fact that while today's reality is a mess in many ways (and it is!) -- it could also (with Time Travel/Butterfly Effects/Chaos Theory) -- have been a much, much bigger mess(!) -- with Butterfly Effect horrors beyond your wildest understandings! <g> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butterfly_Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butterfly_Effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect Disclaimer: The above was written for thought-provoking and possibly (depending on the reader's viewpoint!) comedy purposes only! <g> (Though it also works if read from a serious viewpoint...)